


fun-size super nice guy

by apothefarley



Series: The Mr Spreadsheet Verse [1]
Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: Getting a Pet, M/M, Married Life, Mr Spreadsheet, Patrick Brewer is Gay, Post-Canon, allusion to the existence of sex and the fact married people have it, david is surprisingly good with raccoons, i've been running my mouth about mr s on twitter for weeks it was past time, raccoon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-26
Updated: 2020-11-26
Packaged: 2021-03-10 07:47:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27729751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apothefarley/pseuds/apothefarley
Summary: David leans his upper body out of the door to see, so he doesn’t have to come out into the rain. “Ew!” he shrieks, when he sees, shrinking back into the doorway. “What the fuck? Is that a rat?”“Have you ever seen a rat that looks like that? It’s a raccoon, David.”David exhales, visibly relieved. “Okay. I didn’t know raccoons looked like that. I’ve never seen one.”Or, David and Patrick unwittingly acquire a new family member.
Relationships: Patrick Brewer/David Rose
Series: The Mr Spreadsheet Verse [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2040142
Comments: 26
Kudos: 112





	fun-size super nice guy

“Uh, David?” Patrick calls. He’s around the side of the store, flattening boxes as fast as he can in the rain while David ‘rearranges stock’ (which is his code for sitting on the counter on his phone). 

“What?” David shouts back, clearly only half listening. It makes Patrick roll his eyes, but also something fizzy start up in his chest, at the fact he can read David so easily, even when they’re not in the same room. That they get to have the chores, the everyday domesticities, the tiny annoyances. That they have a life together. A marriage. 

Anyway. He’s getting very distracted. And there’s a very pressing issue at hand. “Could you come out here, please?”

David appears in the doorway. “What?” he asks, ducking to avoid the rain. “And why are you crouching down? You’ll get your jeans wet. I know they’re kind of ugly and maybe deserve it but wet denim is not good for anyone. And I really don’t wanna put laundry on tonight.”

“Look what I found,” Patrick says, gesturing to the corner next to the recycling bin. Well, not to the corner. Specifically, to the very tiny baby raccoon hunkered down in the corner, trying to avoid the rain. 

David leans his upper body out of the door to see, so he doesn’t have to come out into the rain. “Ew!” he shrieks, when he sees, shrinking back into the doorway. “What the fuck? Is that a rat?”

“Have you ever seen a rat that looks like that? It’s a raccoon, David.”

David exhales, visibly relieved. “Okay. I didn’t know raccoons looked like that. I’ve never seen one.”

“ _Never _? You’re Canadian!”__

____

____

“Okay,” says David, in his patented Changing The Subject Voice. “What do we do with it? It can’t stay out here.”

“I can’t see a mommy raccoon,” Patrick tells him, holding a hand out towards the animal. As expected, it shrinks away. “I tried to pick it up but it won’t let me.”

David steps out into the rain, immediately bringing his hands up to cover his hair. Patrick just barely bites down on telling him that it’s probably futile at this juncture. He doesn’t want David to go back inside- he wants to say how this plays out.

David crouches next to him, grimacing. He holds his ringed left hand out to the raccoon, who immediately sits up and inches towards him a little. When it’s within grabbing reach, he wraps his big hand around the soft part of its belly and scoops it in towards him, settling it against his sweatered chest. 

“I don’t know why you acted like it was such a big deal, Patrick,” he says earnestly. “This little thing is hardly a threat. Let’s go inside.”

Once inside, David leans against the cash, bouncing the raccoon lightly, playing with its- fingers? Do raccoons have fingers? Paws? “Hey, honey, look, it likes me!” 

It certainly does appear to. 

“It’s actually kind of c-hey!” he says, turning his attention back to the animal in his arms. “This is Dries Van Noten, don’t mess it up or I’ll put you back in the rain.”

Patrick sighs. “Any chance you know where the nearest vet is?”

*

Taking the raccoon to see Miguel seems a little like treason on Ted, David says in the car on the way there. Patrick points out that Miguel has one thing on Ted: the fact that he is currently in Schitt's Creek, and not on the Galapagos. That irrefutable point silences David’s grumbling, and he returns to pointing things out to the raccoon out the window. 

“David, I’m sure it doesn’t-” care, is how Patrick was going to finish that sentence, but he pulled up at the intersection and turned to look while he was saying it, and now he’s staring at his husband pointing at a car and saying _car _very slowly, to a very eager raccoon who is leaning its front paws on his car window and staring out of it.__

____

____

He decides it’s in his best interest to just shut his mouth for the rest of the ride to the vet clinic. 

*

Patrick has never actually met Miguel, on account of the fact that, before today, he had no need for veterinary services. Because of this, he’s slightly thrown off by just how hot the man that comes out to greet them is, and when he asks how he can help them today, Patrick just blurts out, “Raccoon.” He hasn’t quite gotten used to the being allowed to find random hot men hot part of being gay, yet. He married the first guy he ever admitted to himself he thought was hot, he’s out of practice, sue him.

David rolls his eyes indulgently and gives Patrick a gentle nudge with his shoulder. He always gets sappy and fond when Patrick explores his sexuality; it’s a sign of how far they’ve grown together. “Patrick found this baby raccoon in the alley at the side of our store, on its own. We bought it to get checked out?” 

Miguel ushers them back to the exam room, and tries to take the raccoon from David as they go. The raccoon, which has taken worryingly quickly to Patrick’s one and only, objects to this. It hisses at Miguel, and swipes for him. Instantly, David starts shushing it, running his free hand repetitively down its back, soothing. Patrick watches, enthralled, as slowly, David and Miguel manage to get the raccoon onto the table for the world’s most cursory exam.

“Well,” Miguel starts, handing the raccoon back to David. It immediately burrows into his warmth, and he cradles it easily in one of his big hands. Patrick really wishes he knew why a baby raccoon has taken so instantaneously to his husband, but he doesn’t begrudge it. He gets it. He took to David pretty instantly as well. “It’s a boy. He’s totally healthy, about six weeks old. No real reason for him to be left behind, as far as I can tell.”

“So what now?” Patrick asks. All three of them cast their eyes to the window in the exam room. It’s already pitch dark and there’s wind battering a heavy rain against the glass, rattling the frame. None of them are particularly on board with letting something this tiny and wobbly on its paws out in this weather, weather they’d barely be out in themselves. 

“We could keep him here?” Miguel suggests. “I’m sure we have a kennel free he could sleep in for tonight.”

Down the hall, a vicious-sounding dog lets out a low pitched, hostile bark. David holds the raccoon a little closer to his chest and wrinkles his nose. The raccoon, in turn, burrows his tiny face into Patrick’s husband’s neck. He’s pretty sure at this point that they’re in cahoots. 

“Could we…take him home?” David asks tentatively, scratching at the nape of the raccoon’s neck. That’s his anxious tell. Usually, though, it’s the nape of Patrick’s neck he’s scratching at to soothe him. Patrick can’t believe that his life has become this, a fully grown, married man, a business owner, jealous of a raccoon. “Like, can you do that with raccoons?”

Miguel tilts his head, considering. “I mean, I guess so? I’m pretty sure he’s an orphan, so he won’t really have anywhere to go, and he’s only a little baby so I’m sure he won’t do that much damage to your house.”

David balks visibly at this, but then the raccoon reaches up and pats his little paw? Claw? Against David’s stubbled cheek and he softens again, smiling down at him with gooey eyes the likes of which Patrick only ever gets turned on him when David wants something. “You wanna come home with us, little man?”

The gooey eyes Patrick was just lamenting about turn on him then, big and brown and shiny. His husband really is preternaturally beautiful. Patrick wondered if he might get used to it a little, as they settled into the routine of marriage, but no. If anything, the longer he spends loving David, the more gorgeous he seems to find him. Maybe that’s just the newlywed in him, but he kind of hopes it sticks around forever.

“How about it, honey?” The love of his life asks, raccoon kit clutched protectively to his chest. “He’s an orphan, and it’s scary here. Isn’t it, little guy?” 

Patrick pauses. A raccoon crashing in their spare bedroom is not really how he saw the first, blissful months of their marriage going. The raccoon casts a mournful look at him and then slowly, reaches out a tiny paw for Patrick. Patrick offers him his thumb and he grasps it. David gasps a little bit, pleased as anything, and all of a sudden, Patrick is sold on the dumb thing stealing all his husband’s affection. 

Instead of an answer, Patrick directs a question to Miguel. “Where should we put him to sleep?” David smiles, big and honest, not even trying to bite it back, and that alone makes this whole insane endeavour worth it. 

“You can just put a blanket or a sweater in a cardboard box,” Miguel says. “He doesn’t really need anywhere special to sleep. He should be fine there. Put it in front of a radiator or something so he doesn’t get cold, since he doesn’t have a mom.”

“Thanks for the help, Miguel,” Patrick says, opening the door and making to leave the exam room. David doesn’t follow.

“You okay, David?” Miguel asks, looking up from the chart he’s filling in. Patrick kind of wants to ask what he’s writing. _Stupid newlyweds brought in tiny raccoon boy then asked to keep it _, probably. The thought kind of makes him smile.__

____

____

“What do raccoons like, eat, though?” David asks. 

Patrick fixes his husband with a look to see if he’s joking. He’s decidedly not. His brow is furrowed in genuine confusion and he’s clutching the raccoon tighter than Patrick is sure he’s ever been held by David. If it wasn’t such a ridiculously cute scene, the tiny, bright hot spark of jealousy in Patrick’s stomach would almost definitely be bigger. Which is stupid. 

“You’ve really never seen a raccoon in real life before, have you, babe?”

David frowns. “Literally what part of any of the stuff you know about my life before I moved here would lead you to believe I would have ever encountered a raccoon?”

This is a really good point, so Patrick decides not to press it. Instead, he fishes his car keys out of his coat pocket and wraps his arm around David’s waist, gently ushering his husband and their little temporary lodger out of the vet’s office, into the rain, and then into the car for home. 

*

It’s a relief to finally slip into bed tonight, with his husband, after the longest, weirdest day they’ve had in a very long time, probably since their wedding. The raccoon is settled in front of the electric fire, in a crate from Heather Warner’s farm that they’ve lined with one of the copious amounts of throws Patrick’s mom has insisted on making them, after a dinner of cut up apple (Patrick’s suggestion, of which he was not a fan) and drive-thru fries (David’s offering, which, obviously, he loved). They’re alone behind a closed bedroom door. It’s good. It’s all really good. 

David rests his head against Patrick’s shoulder and turns to look up at him. Patrick doesn’t get to look down at David very often, and it always sends a funny little thrill zinging down Patrick’s spine, getting to feel like the taller one. 

“So today was a day,” he sighs, his whole body relaxing into the mattress. 

Patrick nods and presses his chin into David’s hair, a little curly and unruly from the rain. “Yep. But that’s why you get married, huh? To have someone there to live the days with you.”

David responds only by tilting his face up for a kiss, one that turns languid and syrupy and warms Patrick right through. David brings his hand up and slides it under Patrick’s shirt to scratch at the spot on his lower back that always makes him arch into a kiss. Predictably, he does, and David giggles, sweet and light, against his mouth. Patrick makes clumsy work of climbing to straddle David’s hips, pressing him back into the pillows, sliding inquisitive hands up his sides. 

And then there’s a faint scratching noise on the other side of their bedroom door. Patrick freezes, mouth still pressed to David’s neck. David brings a hand up to cup the back of Patrick’s neck, urging him on, but Patrick is too conscious to move.

“C’mon, carry on, it’s fine,” David mutters in his ear, making his voice low and growly how Patrick likes. “He’ll get bored and leave. He’s a baby.”

The scratching stops. Patrick hums happily, content to carry on. He gets lost in it again, the sensation of kissing David, the heat of his skin, the feeling of being incandescently, indescribably happy and safe inside of this life they’re building together. 

He’s just leaning back to ask, “So what do you w-” when the scratching starts again. David exhales through his nose harshly. 

“We can’t,” Patrick says, rolling off David and onto his back on his side of the bed. “I can’t in good faith have sex with you when there’s an infant raccoon six feet away. I’m sorry, babe.”

“He can’t see us,” David mutters under his breath, but gets up to go to the door. 

He opens it and says, “You know, it’s not good manners to cockblock people when you’ve been invited to stay at their house.” Patrick can’t believe his life, can’t believe he’s married to a man who talks to a six week old raccoon baby the way most people would talk to a human adult. It’s ridiculous. It’s the best. 

Oblivious, the raccoon seems to take the open door as a sign he’s being invited in. Before either of them can even process trying to stop it, he’s in the bed, in the space between where he and David each sleep. He’s lying on his back, their dove grey sheets resting across his little belly, paws outside of the covers, looking expectantly at David, as if waiting for him to get in too. Patrick’s on his side, propped up on one elbow, taking in the tiny creature in the bed next to him, where his husband usually lays. David surveys the entire scene with his head on a tilt, then sighs resignedly and ambles back towards his side of the bed. 

“Fine,” he says, sliding in and turning out the bedside lamp. “One night. That’s all you get.”

Content, the raccoon closes his eyes. 

*

In the morning, Patrick wakes to David sprawled across his chest, sleeping soundly, hair tickling Patrick’s nose. It’s his favourite way to wake up, warm and surrounded and content. 

Once he’s been awake for a minute, basking in the simple rightness of David’s weight against him, Patrick registers the sound of rustling to his left. He looks down. The damn raccoon is digging through his work bag, chewing idly on the corner of his profit projections for the next quarter. 

“Hey!” he whisper-shouts. The raccoon pauses, then slowly turns its head towards him in reluctant acknowledgement. “Get out of my bag. I need that spreadsheet, mister.” 

“Mmm,” David says, lazy, nuzzling against his chest, just waking up. “Mr Spreadsheet. Strong name for a raccoon.”

**Author's Note:**

> this fic is for betsy, who i adore and is the co-creator of mr spreadsheet. coming up with adventures for him is constant labour of love and source of amusement, and we love our mischievous furry son and his dumb himbo doting fathers. betsy: i love u, thank u so very much. for not just this, but everything 
> 
> it's also for everyone who follows me on twitter @apothefarley for putting up with me and betsy screeching about a fake raccoon for weeks. thanks and hope u love it 
> 
> (title is from tiny meat gang- short kings anthem)


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